I write a weekly travel column for the Columbia Daily Tribune. This blog had focused on stories about American Indian Sites and includes more pictures than my column allows for. I added some stories about native people in other places and will now be putting in stories about American Presidents homes and museums and stories I have written about historical places and museums in the United States.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

A Major Natural History Museum in Kansas

University of
Kansas Natural History Museum

When we were in Laurence, Kansas at the KU
Biodiversity Institute & Natural History Museum, ranked No. 1 among public
programs, we were impressed by the focus on life on the earth.This museum has the largest university collection
in the world of specimensofplants, animals, fossils and the
archeological.

Walking into the Natural History Panorama
of North American mammals was a wow experience. We felt we had been dropped into an alternate
reality where all of the mammals of North America were suddenly there in front
of us in their natural settings.

The University
of Kansas Natural History Museum has a marvelous collection of taxidermied
animals.

Each area had its appropriate vegetation,
water, rocks and background so cleverly integrated that you couldn’t see where
the picture background began.

In 1886 William T. Hornaday went on what he
called, “The Last Buffalo Hunt,” to get specimens for what could be an animal
headed for extinction.

One
of the men he taught his methods to for preparing animals for display was Lewis
Lindsay Dyche. Hornaday later pushed for
the government to protect bison and the numbers have gone up so there is no
chance of their extinction.

Hornaday helped prepare the animals for a
panorama of North American Wildlife to be shown at the Kansas Pavilion at the
1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.

Many
of these animals became part of the present exhibition when Dyche's methods of taxidermy
mounting and exhibition caught the public’s eye at a time when neither the
media nor the nature programs had shown much interest. The State of Kansas
dedicated Dyche hall for a permanent home.

Animals from all
parts of North America are on display at the University of Kansas Natural
History Museum

Seeing the animals on display it was hard
to believe that they had been mounted over 125 years ago.The
panorama is arranged by areas with the first one being the rainforest.This and the Polar section were added later
so visitors could have a complete North American experience.

The positions and faces of the animals
convey much about them.In the forest
scene two wolves face off with a skunk.The skunk is defiant and the male wolf is threatening while the female wolf
is watching patiently as if being more aware of the skunk's power than her
companion.

At the mountainside covered with several
dozen mountain animals we got a lesson in the evolution of the mountain sheep hooves
that not only have sharp edges to hold on to the stones but a suction cup
feature that gives it added advantages.

The plains area has buffalo, deer, badgers,
ground hogs, and other animals so complete that you could study North American
animals by just studying what is in the gigantic Panorma.

At one point in the exhibition is a display
with five different animal furs for the visitor to touch to see the different
ways fur has evolved to meet the living conditions of that particular animal:
Warmth in water, warmth in cold air, snag resistant, underground movement, and
change with the seasons.

From a higher floor we viewed the mountain scene
as if we were standing on a high crag.

On another floor there were naturalist
displays in boxes of mammals in scenes doing what they do.A Red Fox carefully stalks a prairie vole in
a snowy scene.

On the main floor in a separate section
taxidermy horse Comanche stands alone in the semi dark to protect his hide from
light damage.He was the sole survivor
of the Custer’s Last Stand at Little Big Horn.

Despite
being badly shot up he survived and lived another 15 years.When he died his hide was preserved and later
turned into a monument of the battle.

The museum's section on the results of
evolution was so interesting in itself that I will write a separate story about
it for next week's Venture Bound.